Letters - July 18, 2016

I have tried to get the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO)interested in the problem of about 90 per cent of borough councils using squaddies’ compensation (for loss of body parts etc) to pay for their care.

This is not their War Pension nor War Disablement Pension.

I was told you have to go through your local council’s complaints procedure first. Also you have to be the person affected or legally acting on their behalf. Fair enough.

The LGO has made a recent ruling on St Helens MBC after they had been using the compensation awarded to a brain damaged civilian to pay for their care.

The LGO has asked them, and all UK borough councils, to stop doing this.

The LGO cannot force them though.

One further worry is that a council could put a squaddie, with a hefty bank balance, into high quality, high cost care, until the loot runs out. What then, hey??

In Blackpool the British Limbless Veterans Association (BLESMA) is falling on hard times and looks like closing down.

This news came out during Armed Forces week, when councils around the country were falling over themselves to sing ‘It’s Tommy This And Tommy That When The Bullets Start To Fly’. (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling).

Keith Hallam

Via email

SCAM

My mother-in-law victim of lottery scam

I wish to use this letters page to warn of a scam letter that has been doing the rounds in Wales, the North East, and now here in Lancashire.

The letter, which my mother-in-law received, claimed to be from the People’s Postcode Lottery and told her she had won £325,0 00. All she needed to do was phone an 0207 London number to claim her prize.

Her suspicions were raised as she had not entered any such lottery and when she raised the subject with me I did some checks.

The scam letter looks fairly authentic and has various logos at the bottom and could fool people as there is a genuine People’s Post Code Lottery.

But when I googled the 0207 telephone number, it appeared on a website listing various scam numbers.

If anyone receives these types of letters, always tell others about it and seek advice. And if it sounds too good to be true, it invariably is too good to be true.

Julie Jeffries

via email

BREXIT

The majority voted ‘out’ - get over it!

I can’t get over the remain campaigners continuing to shout out their opposition regarding the result of the referendum, the majority of the people in this country voted out -that’s it finished.

As for all the foreign nationals in the UK there is no threat to their jobs whatsoever - let’s just get on and arrange our future and just to let the worry warts know this is a list of the countries which have so far signalled they would like to open talks with the UK over a trade deal: the US (yes, amazing, isn’t it, how quickly a queue can dissolve), China, India, the EFTA nations (Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Greenland and not forgetting the Faroe Islands), Australia and New Zealand, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Ghana and… Germany! The latter having been told by its industrialists that it had better strike a free trade deal with the UK after Brexit, or else. Not surprising as Germany exports over £5bn to the UK and only imports £10bn from us (figures from HM Revenue & Customs).

Cliff Fazackerley

Address supplied

BREXIT

We had belief in ourselves once

Whether one voted ‘leave’ or ‘remain’ in the recent referendum the time has surely come to grasp the yoke of freedom driving Britain forward at a pace that will inspire Europe and the world.

Belief in ourselves is paramount now. No more ‘can’t be done,’ no more clichés, no more meaningless slogans. No need for the chancellor of the exchequer to promise Manchester and the surrounding districts including Chorley a ‘Northern Powerhouse’ thinking back, we used to be a powerhouse remember ‘Cottonopolis’ when this part of the world spun the cotton, cut the cloth and clothed the world?

How short our memories, how lacking our self-belief. Well, it’s time we woke up to this once in a lifetime opportunity. Lick our ‘remain’ wounds if we must but heal we will and in the healing will come entrepreneurs, ideas and inventions showing disbelievers everywhere a Britain free from the rule of others - a New Britain, an independent Britain one that is in the world and welcomes the world.

In short, we are free of the rope - the Europe - from which we have hung too long.

Joe Dawson

Via email

POLITICS

It’s time to scrap the sugar Tax

When George Osborne stood up in Parliament in March to announce the sugar tax, the prospect of Brexit was distant and remote.

The political dynamics have changed significantly since then. Many businesses, particularly smaller ones, are facing months of uncertainty, and the sugar tax is adding to this uncertainty.

We know that the inflationary impact of the sugar tax will mean an extra £1bn of national debt interest, UK pension funds will be £3bn worse off, and we also think that £250m will need to be spent on uprating index-linked benefits because of the sugar tax.

It is a deeply unfair tax on poorer households, is unhelpful for businesses, and will do very little to reduce obesity levels. We call on the new Chancellor to take account of the new political environment and to scrap the sugar tax.